Patch necessary for M2TW "Gold" Edition

[Longasc]

Hello,

now that my system can handle M2TW, I ordered a "gold" edition from Amazon. It contains M2TW and the Kingdoms expansion.

1. Do I have to patch the game?
2. If yes, in which order?
3. How comes that www.totalwar.com only shows me a video for the upcoming Empire: Total War instead of a link to the support/patch files. I tried to get there, but always got sent back to the Empire advertisement.

[TechStrider]

Hello Longasc,

It is possible that there is a new shipping version of Gold. If so, my information may be well intentioned but incorrect. Earlier this year we went through a bit of hell with the Gold release. Rather unbelievably, it was shipped with a dated version of the executable and the official patch would not run on Gold. (I am not saying there is more than one release version of Gold. Please let us know if your copy is different from what I detail here.)

A quick summary:

It is just fine to install your game off the shipping disks. You will not find out what you have until then.

There are separate exe files for kingdoms and medieval2. After your full install, you start each game and go to the Options screen. In the corner you will see your version number. My copy of Gold installed Med2 as v1.02 and Kingdoms as v1.04. Let's now handle these one at a time:

Med2: v1.02 has (or had) what seems to be all the game play fixes that v1.03 has but it is NOT save game compatible with v1.03. You can load v1.02 games into v1.03 but you cannot load v1.03 games into v1.02. You also cannot play multiplayer games with the two versions. Ergo, you want to update to v1.03. That was not trivial earlier this year. You get the benefit of our pain, after a considerable period of denial, SEGA released this:

http://help.sega.com/index.php?_m=do...loaditemid=216

As the instructions say, download the replacement Med2 file and, after a full install of your Gold version, just copy the new file into the Med2 directory. You may want to rename the original Medieval2.exe to something like Medieval2_v1-02.exe so you can go back for some reason.

This works, I have done it. You end up with v1.03.

Kingdoms: The current version is v1.05. You want this. Go to:

http://help.sega.com/index.php?_m=do...id=215&nav=0,1

Download the US version (unless you have a different version like UK) of the GOLD patch for Kingdoms. On my screen it is the second grouping down. Yes, the SEGA page is stupid and claims this is the v1.5 patch. It is not. It is the v1.05 patch. Run the patch.

This also works, I have done it. You end up with v1.05.

Life is good, the games are fun.

There are lots of opinions on this board as to the issues within the fully patched versions of the game. It will take you quite some time to really run up against some of the limitations. If you follow some of the threads, you will at least come to understand a few issues that - once known - can be avoided. Pikes come to mind. Avoid investing lots of time and effort into recruiting bunches of them and they are less irritating. Once you have a good handle on the game, do look into some of the more basic mods like:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=250


A few more suggestions:

First: When you start a campaign, you get to pick the difficulty levels for the Campaign part of the game and for the Battle part of the game. It is not too hard to play the Battles at VH. In fact, you will get to the point that it is frustrating when set lower. Noting your join date and number of posts, I am sure that you are just fine with the Battle side of things. The Campaign difficulty is more, how shall I say it, fraught with peril. On Medium, things are not just a bit easier, they are a tad bit less crazy. On VH, after not too many turns, everything and the sink get thrown at you. This can be fun if you have learned the ropes. If you want more accessible fun and a better chance to learn the overall game, you may want to try M/M, M/H or M/VH. Assume that you will try some factions for a while and then want to try others. You will get the chance to start new campaigns with different settings.

Next suggestion:

Horse Archers really do Rule

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73479

Lots of fun!

Last:

There are great people on this forum whose love of the game shines through. Nose about and you will find shedloads of supporting information. I suspect that you already know this quite well.

Have a great time with this game.

Postscript: I looked again at your join date and number of posts and then reread this reply. Please do not take anything as dismissive. I am sure you have a pretty darn good idea about what you are doing. I wrote most of the last stuff addressed to others who may read the post based on the query about patching Gold. Most of the regulars started with the original game and have more M2TW experience. I am sure that more of the Gold buyers are starting on the game and may want a bit more to go on.

[Longasc]

Thanks a lot, Techstrider. You are very helpful and kind!

The game will arrive on December 27th, and I am sure I will enjoy it.

Medieval 1 was my favorite Total War game, in fact I enjoyed it more than Rome. Despite the many improvements I had many issues with Rome, e.g. that spearmen were just overrun by Cavalry. I also ended up using a lot of Cavalry as the Romans, did not feel right to me. The M2TW demo was already better in this regard.

Maybe it is also the medieval scenario that I prefer. Not only because of a general fancy for the Middle Ages, but I think this time fits the game engine and mechanics best. I have serious concerns regarding TW:Empires and ranged combat.

This said, I hope M2TW runs fine with the latest patch. Not only in terms of just working, but being better than Rome in terms of gameplay. But when I take a look at the recommended Vanilla mod it seems that Creative Assembly still cannot be arsed to finish polishing a product...

But I heard that squalor is less of a nuisance and stuff like that. Sounds good, I am not really a fan of modding, but I will gladly accept such obviously well done and purposeful mods.


Thanks for your hints, I will start out with Medium Campaign and Very Hard Combat settings. I already downloaded a bunch of patches, the FAUST and some Mods in preparation.